In another demonstration of silicon health AMD was showing working 28nm mobile GPU silicon running Dirt 3. It's too early to talk about performance or specifications, but AMD is still committed to a Q4 release for its 28nm GPU lineup.

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With 28nm mobile GPUs, Bulldozer in a few weeks and Trinity in early '12 AMD is ramping very fast now that they have sorted Bulldozer production issues. The new GF Fab in NY should help supply demand in '12 also. It's all good as far as I can see, well except for Intel.Reply

Let's be reasonable. Intel is coming out with its 22nm Tri-gate transistors (Ivy Bridge) in a few months which will likely blow Bulldozer out of the water. Nvidia may have some rough times if they can't put out a competing product soon. Intel may never attempt to create a discrete 3D graphics card but if integrated graphics get powerful enough that market might be at risk of becoming obsolete.Reply

Intel doesnt have to blow bulldozer out of the water. Intel has had a proven product (sandy bridge) out for many months now. It is up to AMD to prove if they are even competitive, if they ever get bulldozer out in the consumer market. And Trinity in early 2012?? We will be lucky to have Bulldozer out in significant supply by that time, in my opinion. Reply

You're wonderfully optimistic in all your posts, but I can't help feel that it's rather misplaced. Trinity is scheduled for 1H 2012 which means any time up to 30th June, and we have no idea what's "enhanced" about Enhanced Bulldozer. It could be a boost similar to the jump from Conroe to Penryn, but we don't even know how Zambezi will perform so there's little point speculating on Komodo, let alone predicting that AMD will stay ahead of the curve.Reply

We can predict that on a per-clock and per-core basis, Bulldozer will be faster than the current K10.5 designs, so going to an eight core processor should give AMD a product that will be in some demand. As far as Trinity, considering we have Llano, which is K10.5 CPU with the GPU included, Trinity going to a Bulldozer core with the GPU included may not be all THAT difficult, all things considered. AMD went to a 2-core per module approach to allow for combinations of CPU and GPU(so we could see 3 CPU+1 GPU, or 2 CPU+2 GPU for example). At least, that is what I remember from some of the AMD presentations about "Fusion".

I agree that it is a bit premature to say just how good or bad the performance of Bulldozer will be, but considering that the reason for the delays to this point have been problems ramping clock speed, which are now shown to be resolved, it looks good for AMD to be on track for the next six months at least.Reply

I stopped holding my breath for AMD to actually release Bulldozer - bought an i5. Waited through the June non-release, started waiting until the September non-release, didn't want to wait until the October non-release.Reply

So, being reasonable is how good the performance will be as a platform. Intel still does not have a competitive graphics solution at this point, and while AMD CPU performance may have been lower, can you seriously tell me that a $500 Intel based computer tower is better in ALL ways compared to a $500 AMD based tower? In general, Intel has had the CPU advantage, but the graphics and other supporting chips and chipsets in an AMD based system are better.

A Phenom 2 X4 955 right now when paired with a decent video card also has enough performance in games where I don't find it lacking, no matter that Intel has faster processors. Bulldozer will be faster per clock compared to the current K10.5 offerings, and with 8 physical cores, multi-threaded apps will see a huge benefit.

So, who cares if Intel has the fastest chip as long as AMD performance is fast enough and is competitive for the money?Reply

Amd based chipsets throw every feature into it so manufacturers decide what to implement. Intel on the other side seems to milk manufacturers and indirectly end users by having many different chipsets for :want integrated graphics go h67/z68dont want it go p67oh but i want ssd caching again z68dont want any advanced stuff h61oh but I want usb3 and sata3...and want support for more than 1333MHz RAM...Reply